Monthly Archives: July 2013

This week’s topic for my food studies class was the issue of food marketing. Do you ever flick through old cookbooks? You will have noticed the darkness of the pictures and the unappetising appearance of the food, and that’s even without maraschino cherries and radish roses. TV cookery and the “here’s one I prepared earlier” phenomenon changed that.

I decided to kick off my class with a terrific clip you can watch above in which a make-up artist “for food” shows us how she prepares a burger for its 15 minutes of fame. We’re spared nothing and neither is the patty. It is spared actual cooking (20 seconds per side) because otherwise it would shrivel to the size of a real fast food burger, and the fluffy lettuce scaffolded by toothpicks would cook and wither as lettuce really does. The bun sits on cardboard, which explains why it isn’t soggy. Hot skewers provide the faux grill lines and food dye is brushed on for that “rich beautiful colour”.

The patty has an incision made so it can be spread to cover the entire bun, as no mass produced patty ever has. Dozens of lettuce leaves are looked at before sufficiently perky leaves are found. Need I add that the sesame seeds are glued on to the bun? Another site shows what engine oil can do to enhance the appearance of a pancake stack.

Food advertising is nothing new. My mother’s stained 1930s cookbook features delightfully illustrated ads. Who remembers the urchins deliriously sniffing the aroma of Bisto gravy? My generation still love the aeroplane jelly song and we are happy little vegemites.

Increasingly we’re seeing this nostalgia used to sell manufactured foods.

My students were fascinated by the beer being flogged by the good-looking young man from cult TV programme Entourage. Imagine a beer that needs you to plunge the “churchkey” (can-opener) into the can. So manly, so old world. Given that ring pull cans did away with the need for these devices what exactly is the advantage of going back to the future? Apparently “effort is how you get to the good things”, (so much for the last 50 years of innovation). Are they serious?

Apparently so, because everything old is new again. Take the new deployment of “artisanal”. It means handmade and suggests traditional values of skill, artistry and a one-off product. A certain global pizza company is now selling artisanal pizza. What does that mean? Better than our usual rubbish seems to be the inference.

Then there’s the new green advertising, you know the sort of thing that makes urban Australians puff up with pride, images of rolling green hills, we need to drive hundreds of kilometres to see and orchards whose produce is processed offshore.

Are we Australians nostalgic enough to buy beer that needs a can-opener? I’m scared to turn on the TV to find out.

A recent trip to Singapore and Malaysia brought me face to face with the sharp contrast between fast and slow cultures. Okay, no-one is going to call Singapore slow. It is a city on the move, often derided as an oversized shopping mall in which all traces of tradition have been bulldozed to make way for more shops.

What struck me most strongly in both countries is their (sigh) intense civility.

We know Singapore is a deeply regimented society and that much of what takes place there is mandated. So it’s no surprise folks actually wait until you have stepped from the train, rather than crushing you as you disembark.

We spent two days in relentlessly multicultural Melaka, during which time we witnessed an amazing late night gathering in the neighbouring kampong, which I assume had only been preserved because of its touristic value. There was music, sound and colour.

Exploring the kampong a couple of days later I was engaged in conversation by a friendly local. I got the old “where do you come from” routine. This of course doesn’t happen much here in Oz. I’m told that we Aussies are friendly when approached but we do not approach strangers in this manner, in fact even when we see travellers clearly in distress we tend to ignore them.

So I asked this Malay gentleman what the hubbub the other night had been about.

“Ah” he said, “ my hero was here to meet us” with hand over heart as he pointed to the large poster of ex-PM Mahathir. I thought it best not to remind him of Mr Mahathir’s lowly opinion of Aussie’s in general and Paul Keating in particular.

He asked me why we hadn’t come down to the kampong to see for ourselves, telling me: “we had so much local food you would have been welcome to join us”. I thanked him anyway and wandered off contemplating his words. Did he have any idea how far removed from our cultural practices his question was? Imagine if I told him about the overseas student who said, regarding her three years in Australia: “ I’ve really loved being here, I’m, just sorry never to have been inside an Australian home”.

We Australians are sick of having our culture criticised and very sick of the claim that we have none. I’m reminded of a wonderful woman called Joy Burn. Joy was raised in Cunderdin in WA’s wheat belt and was a stalwart of the CWA. Privileged to interview her, I arrived at her home to be greeted by the smell of fresh baked Anzac biscuits.

Joy Burn was old-school, an Australian of the Depression and War years, who invited neighbours round and offered a cuppa, even to “new Australians” like my family. That Aussie hospitality still exists but sometimes we need to be reminded to open our doors wider.

Though the mornings are getting warmer, Sunday mornings offer something of a quandary for this foodie. How should slow weekend days begin? A sleep-in followed by a leisurely breakfast in bed, perusing the papers? Or will culinary considerations rule? Early though it may be, a trip to my nearest farmers’ market is sure to at least provide good fair-trade coffee and an organic egg and bacon roll. Yes the bacon is free-range; the roll is made from organic ingredients, as are the blanched spinach and array of sauces. I must weigh up my need for the luxury of a late start against the need to express my eco-friendly, slow identity. Joking aside, should a trip to the FM be a compulsory element of a slow weekend?

We need to consider what is at stake, not steak, though no doubt that will also be free-range. Artisanal foods – boutique foods made on a small scale – are the antidote to the mass consumption offered by supermarkets and fast food outlets. They are more expensive, reflecting the smaller scale of production and increased cost of high quality ingredients. If we want to continue to see these products on sale; those of us who can afford them should support these local producers.

Surely the most important consideration is of ”food miles.” Those of us concerned with reducing food miles are becoming known as “locavores”, add that to your wardrobe of identity formulations. Locavores recognize that the further food travels the greater its carbon footprint. Importing foods from afar is wasteful from the point of view of fuel costs in transport and also the extra packaging that may be involved. However, there are some products which are clearly associated with a particular country or region. If we forgo these luxuries what happens to the struggling farmers in that area?

If we buy locally from food producers we meet we can be assured of fair trade, we can assume no child exploitation has been involved. Young Bluey helping on the farm is not experiencing the life of African children sold into slavery for the hazardous job of picking cocoa beans.

Then there’s the experience. If speed is your thing the supermarket makes sense, while the Farmer’s Market offers a community experience during which you forage for hidden gems all the while expressing your eco-consciousness as you stuff organic goodies in your sustainable shopping bags.

Farmer’s markets are spreading, no doubt aided by the messages delivered by the likes of Maggie Beer, the ever effusive Costa and of course Stephanie Alexander whose Kitchen Garden Project continues to spread and to inspire, showing children how to grow fruit and vegetables and encouraging their pleasure and wonder in that process. Those who take in the message will face the weekend challenge in years to come. Let’s hope the egg and bacon sandwiches continue to thrill.

This week in the Food Studies class I teach, the topic turned to food miles. Having newly learnt that much of our food comes from very far away, students have written guiltily and at length, of the scourge of the carbon footprint as another new manifestation of the problems of life in the 21st century, as though food has never travelled before.

When I tell them globalisation began with Colombus they look startled, as young people who have perhaps never learnt of him, or indeed any other historical figure, might.

Eminent anthropologist, Sidney Mintz argues in his monograph Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, that it all began with the sugar trade. You only have to consider the great sugar producing nations to see the truth of this. Not only did sugar travel across the world, so did the plants themselves and the labourers, and with horrifying consequences.

The Caribbean was largely repopulated by slaves from Africa while indigenous populations were eradicated. And what of us? Australia’s history of “blackbirding ” of Pacific Islanders to cut sugar cane in Queensland is no less shameful.

This history is of course rarely considered as we tuck into ginger cake, lamingtons or banana bread. These traditional afternoon tea delights are redolent of our British origins. It’s just that we forget how closely tied those origins are to our colonial past.

My grandmother and my mother grew up in the cold, working class, north of England and their dietary preferences reflected those origins. Friday night dinners shared with Nana would inevitably end with “pudding”. This pudding might emerge from any number of strange, but available, ingredients, custard and jam being amongst them. But always desiccated coconut, which I have since grown to loath, my admiration for the origins of that archetypal Aussie sweet, the mighty lamington, not withstanding.

However desiccated coconut, bananas and ginger (powdered, preserved in syrup or candied) have long been staple treats of the British diet. Of course they speak to us of Empire – of the days when Britannia ruled the wave and her British (and Australian) subjects could enjoy the fruits of empire: tea and sugar being foremost amongst them.

We might think those retro sticky date puddings (there’s another one – no date palms in the Old Dart) are very last decade but as sure as winter follows autumn these sweet delights will grace menus this winter, yet again. What of the health messages, the diabetes epidemic, the obesity epidemic? They didn’t emerge from a culture which makes its own puds on special occasions. They are more likely to result from an assault on the freezer compartment of your supermarket, while a homemade pudding offers the enjoyment of shared activity, sense of accomplishment and real flavour.

Less of Sara Lee and more of Margaret Fulton I say. What was that Noel Coward said, something about everything old being new again?